Chili night !

Well, the weather is getting chilly and so a good old fashioned hot and spicy chili con carne is one of the best things to get the chill out if your bones. I followed Jamie Olliver's recipe (the one from his American book), but without the coffee this time. Just didn't get around it. It was still quite good. Remembered to add extra chili pepper flakes bc it gets less spicy as it cooks. Tried cooking the red beans "from scratch" but I should have probably used a pressure cooker, since they never got soft. Ended up using the tinned ones and it was just fine.
A new addition to chili night was nachos ! Yummi !!

Birthday Cake

            So, last monday Monday Night Dinner took a pause, or maybe moved to a new venue for once thanks to M's bday dinner. But the cook in question did not pause ! She was charged with the arduous task of making THE birthday cake. Expectations were high, in part because of a previous bday cake, and in part because M has a keen sense of beauty and design that I cannot even try to match. Anyhow, to cut a long story short, after many hours watching people cook, and especially decorate, cakes on youtube. I kept track of some of the inspiring pictures I found on the internet on my new Pinterest account.

            Here is the result :

And here are the instructions for those who would like to make a similar one:

Step 1. Choose the recipes for the cakes. After playing around with my pie pans I choose a smaller bundt cake shaped one (made to make pumkin cake) to place on top of a 22 inch round one.The smaller would be coconut and the larger one dark chocolate, good combination. Click on the links to see the recipes. The coconut cake is very clever, just substitute coconut milk for regular milk, I did not fill it with anything, due to its pretty shape. While the cakes were cooking I started playing with the sugar paste and made the hearts and stars that I would stick with the wire for the final decoration. They need to be a bit thicker than your wire, but not too thick otherwise they will be too heavy and not stand straight, and the wire should be carefully inserted before they dry.

The future flying stars/hearts are drying on a silicon sheet.

Here is the coconut cake, pretty hu ? It gleams it is so sweet !

 

And here is the first of the two chocolate cakes (when I win the lottery I will have an oven big enough for two cake pans)

So, if you want to cover a cake with sugar paste you need to cover it with a small layer of marmalade, or ganache, or almond paste. This is to cover the imperfections, the crumbs and to make it stick better. The coconut cake I covered with raspberry marmalade, I had it because I wanted to make raspberrys a more important part of the project, however it is not the best for this kinf od job because of all the little seeds.... (duh!).

So then you roll out the sugar paste. The main tricky part about this is to decide how thick to make it. If it is on the thicker side then it will rip less easily (see below) and it will cover better the little imperfections of the cake. However, I don't like to eat lots of sugar paste when I eat the cake and so I'd rather it be thin, but this has risks, especially when you need to mold the sugar paste around a funny shape, such as my bundt cake....

Above is the picture from the top, but here below you can see that I managed to get quite a few rips because it was so thin. Thankfully there are decorations !!

In the meanwhile I prepared chocolate ganache, just from dark chocolate and cream and had fun placing it all around, and in between, my two chocolate cakes (lots of instructional videos on youtube on how to do that).

This cake was covered with two colors, one for the sides and one for the top. For the sides I made two long ribbons (tried to do one really long one but it didn't work very well). The ribbon is taller than the cake and so it was folded below the dish where the cake was sitting on.

I began to decorate the small cake with hearts and little dots, and realized that I may need to move it on top of the other one before it got too fancy to move. When you stack cakes of different sizes it is better to insert some support in the bottom cake to stop it from caving in. I took some of the thousands of wodden chopsticks I have from the sushi delivery and cut them to the right size, just sticking up half a centimeter. I used six in the circle of a diameter that is smaller than the coconut cake's.

Here is the ribbon, one can put saran wrap inside to keep it puffy. I also made a little rose that I had learned in one of the youtube videos. I left them to dry overnight.

The place where the two cakes join is usually covered with a ribbon or with beads like here. Ho yea, sugar paste decorations will stick nicely just by wetting them with a bit of water. When the contact surface is small (such as for butterflies for example) one can use royal icing.... In the middle of the bunt cake I placed some almond paste to stick the wires with the stars and hearts. Here is a test.

The stars and hearts were added at the last minute. I had also made a name plate, it was too small to write Happy Birthday, and it took a bit to get royal icing of the right consistency for writing....

Ta dah !

Monday tagliatelle

Home made tagliatelle with girolles mushrooms, shrimp and calamari in tomato sauce. The trick I think is to cook everything separately and then mix on the pasta and add some fresh parsley. Of course this could not have happened without the precious help of my sou-chef !!

Lots of lovely special guests, very happy cooks, new friendly faces, and smiles all around.

Ya dah !

24-09-12 note to self

Ravioli is doable at the last minute, for about 6 people. Quiche aux poireaux with a bit of blue cheese is a big hit !

And... we're back !

OK, let's try this again. It's been over a year and a half, but monday dinner has not stopped. Through the thick and thin, the dramatic and the sweet, we're still here. I do have pictures from some of our past dinners and so from time to time I will be posting "flashback" posts.

It's september, a new semester starts and we give it a new try. A good way to start of course is Lasagna ! Wrote a post about that before. Here I can add some pictures of the cooking process. As I write this my house smells wonderfully of ragù. I don't even know if anyone is coming tomorrow ! Not a problem, ragù (and lasagna) freezes well.

During the summer I made lasagna in the Barsac, in the Auvergne (see location). I used a slow cooker.... I was very skeptical, but in fact it turned out fine. I did put it in there only once was already sautéed and mixed up though. My friends have been trying to convince me to get a slow cooker... we'll see...

For now here are the picts for the preparation that I think are valid with and without a slowcooker: sauté the vegetables, layer the meat on top on a slow heat, after it has lost its color break it up and add the canned tomatoes.

Indian inspired

It has been a while since we've had indian-like food ! These are the staples: potato and green peas baked samosas adapted from Julie Sahni's excellent book but made with brick (filo dough), the coconut milk vegetarian curry from the Joy of Cooking and tandoori chicken marinated overnight in Patak's original sauce (mixed with yogurt, ginger and lemon).And rice of course, cooked in the broth from the chicken whose parts were used for the tandoori.

The whole evening was a bit of a blur, the cooking was done in time thanks to the invaluable help of L. and M. Didn't always get everything that was going on at the other end of the table, but it was apparently quite funny !  And this week just whizzed by and I am writing this only on friday and so now I don't remember any memorable quotes. Have to do more of that live blogging, and have to remember the pictures ! The somosas were all gone by the time I took out my camera.

Guests of honor: lovely couple from Chicago
Soundrack: bollywood and the new pornographers

Japanese inspired

Konnichiwa !  こんにちは
Tonight's dinner has been inspired by our special guest from Osaka who innocently brought some seaweed as a present, not knowing that she would then volunteer to help me cook and teach me how to make onigiri for everyone. I could eat rice every day and onigiri reminded me of my two, too short, trips to Japan in the last two years. An easy snack in the train station or at the wonderful supermarkets in the basement of the department stores.

So the idea was to make yakisoba and onigiri. The yakisoba recipe I had gotten from my Wagamama book, and then I did a quick shopping run on a velib to rue st anne at the Kioko supermarket. It turns out that I got the wrong kind of noodles for yakisoba, and I had the wrong kind of soy sauce and seaweed too ! as our guest pointed out. In addition, contrary to my beliefs, onigiri are not made with sushi rice, which is cooked with sugar and rice vinegar, but just with regular japanese rice cooked in water and a bit of salt. Once the rice is ready one must work quickly and make the onigiri while it is still warm (hah ! that is way they have onigiri-shaping boxes ! It takes a real kitchen hero to make them by hand !). This reminded me a lot of when I used to live in Oregon and tried to cook italian meals with the few ingredients available out there... in the end an approximation will be good enough for your local guests who have never tasted the real thing. But C was just lovely about it and she put together a wonderful meal, that it may not have been the real yakisoba but was truly appreciated by the monday night crowd.

yaki udon

Japanese rice, made in Italy !  

Onigiri !!!

Special dessert straight from Osaka

and a new tablecloth !

Dinner topics included the superbowl playoffs of course, looking forward to Greenbay Packers vs Chicago Bears next sunday, and we found out that "The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues." (as confirmed by wikipedia) and JC was distraught over the loss of the Boston Patriots to the NY Jets.

Somehow then we veered off to the link between dinosaurs and chickens.... I forget how we got there.

And finally some quotes:

A further counsel bear in mind: 

If that thy roof be made of glass, 

It shows small wit to pick up stones 

To pelt the people as they pass.

Don Quixote 1605

Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616 

Source.

A's brother apparently said:

there was a man from Kass

whose balls were made out of brass

when he rubbed them together

they played stormy weather

and lightning shot out of his ass

JH response:

oh would I were where I would be

there would I be where I am not

for where I am would I not be

and where I would be I cannot

don't bogart that bottle JC !

which leads to the evening's soundtrack:

easy rider soundtrack 

steppenwolf

and traditional japanese music from deezer

conundrum:

brother and sisters I have none

see that man his father he's my father's son

I don't want to dive into the abyss I just want to catch the bus

(something about Rimbaud)

Totally off topic: 

On a beautiful Paris sunny sunday, during a long walk, I ran into El Nopal, Tacos & Burritos, near the canal St Martin.